Capacitors are an inexpensive little component on a PC motherboard, but they can be a costly headache for manufacturers when a whole bunch of them go bad. Last week, Dell announced it was going to ...

Defective capacitors--or "bad caps" as they are sometimes called--can disable your computer. And while they may not be widely familiar to consumers, they're nothing new to the PC industry. Capacitors, ...

I have this computer that is acting really weird. <BR><BR>The computer will fail to boot most of the time, but sometimes it will boot and then it works okay. The problem is most of the time it doesnt ...

[glytch] sent in a tutorial on replacing dying capacitors on a motherboard, and we honestly can’t think of a better subject for an introductory tutorial. There’s nothing like having your friends think ...

Old electrolytic capacitors are notorious for not working like they used to, but what exactly does a bad capacitor look like, and what kinds of problems can it cause? Usually bad caps leak or bulge, ...

One of my depts has about 6 Dell GX270 towers and 2 of them had motherboards die due to bad caps. Dell replaced them free despite them being out of warranty. But that offer expired some time ...

I worked as a design engineer for an optical-telecom company that had deployed 1000 pieces of equipment worldwide. Having so many modules in the field means a trickle of returns, and it was my job to ...

Fig. 1: Spurious emissions seen on the exciter RF output. One of the biggest hassles in maintaining older equipment is getting it repaired when it fails. A lot of companies don’t even want to deal ...

Back in 2006 I wrote about how my friend Alan Martin over at Texas Instruments had a saying: “It’s always a capacitor.” This was based on his observance that there is a lot of test equipment that goes ...

Capacitors are an inexpensive little component on a PC motherboard, but they can be a costly headache for manufacturers when a whole bunch of them go bad. Last week, Dell announced it was going to ...

Defective capacitors--or "bad caps" as they are sometimes called--can disable your computer. And while they may not be widely familiar to consumers, they're nothing new to the PC industry. Capacitors, ...